THE FIRST BLUESTOCKING.
Miss Keeldar and her uncle had characters that would not harmonize, that
never had harmonized. He was irritable, and she was spirited. He was
despotic, and she liked freedom. He was worldly, and she, perhaps,
romantic.
Not without purpose had he come down to Yorkshire. His mission was
clear, and he intended to discharge it conscientiously. He anxiously
desired to have his niece married, to make for her a suitable match,
give her in charge to a proper husband, and wash his hands of her for
ever.
The misfortune was, from infancy upwards, Shirley and he had disagreed
on the meaning of the words "suitable" and "proper." She never yet had
accepted his definition; and it was doubtful whether, in the most
important step of her life, she would consent to accept it.
The trial soon came.
Mr. Wynne proposed in form for his son, Samuel Fawthrop Wynne.
"Decidedly suitable! most proper!" pronounced Mr. Sympson. "A fine
unencumbered estate, real substance, good connections. _It must be
done!_"
He sent for his niece to the oak parlour; he shut himself up there with
her alone; he communicated the offer; he gave his opinion; he claimed
her consent.
It was withheld.
"No; I shall not marry Samuel Fawthrop Wynne."
"I ask why. I must have a reason. In all respects he is more than worthy
of you."
She stood on the hearth. She was pale as the white marble slab and
cornice behind her; her eyes flashed large, dilated, unsmiling.
"And _I_ ask in what sense that young man is worthy of _me_?"
"He has twice your money, twice your common sense, equal connections,
equal respectability."
"Had he my money counted fivescore times I would take no vow to love
him."
"Please to state your objections."
"He has run a course of despicable, commonplace profligacy. Accept that
as the first reason why I spurn him."
"Miss Keeldar, you shock me!"
"That conduct alone sinks him in a gulf of immeasurable inferiority. His
intellect reaches no standard I can esteem: there is a second
stumbling-block. His views are narrow, his feelings are blunt, his
tastes are coarse, his manners vulgar."
"The man is a respectable, wealthy man! To refuse him is presumption on
your part."
"I refuse point-blank! Cease to annoy me with the subject; I forbid it!"
"Is it your intention ever to marry; or do you prefer celibacy?"
"I deny your right to claim an answer to that question."
"May I ask if you expect some man of title--some peer of the realm--to
demand your hand?"
"I doubt if the peer breathes on whom I would confer it."
"Were there insanity in the family, I should believe you mad. Your
eccentricity and conceit touch the verge of frenzy."
"Perhaps, ere I have finished, you will see me over-leap it."
"I anticipate no less. Frantic and impracticable girl! Take warning! I
dare you to sully our name by a _mésalliance_!"
"_Our_ name! Am _I_ called Sympson?"
"God be thanked that you are not! But be on your guard; I will not be
trifled with!"
"What, in the name of common law and common sense, would you or could
you do if my pleasure led me to a choice you disapproved?"
"Take care! take care!" warning her with voice and hand that trembled
alike.
"Why? What shadow of power have _you_ over me? Why should I fear you?"
"Take care, madam!"
"Scrupulous care I will take, Mr. Sympson. Before I marry I am resolved
to esteem--to admire--to _love_."
"Preposterous stuff! indecorous, unwomanly!"
"To love with my whole heart. I know I speak in an unknown tongue; but I
feel indifferent whether I am comprehended or not."
"And if this love of yours should fall on a beggar?"
"On a beggar it will never fall. Mendicancy is not estimable."
"On a low clerk, a play-actor, a play-writer, or--or----"
"Take courage, Mr. Sympson! Or what?"
"Any literary scrub, or shabby, whining artist."
"For the scrubby, shabby, whining I have no taste; for literature and
the arts I have. And there I wonder how your Fawthrop Wynne would suit
me. He cannot write a note without orthographical errors; he reads only
a sporting paper; he was the booby of Stilbro' grammar school!"
"Unladylike language! Great God! to what will she come?" He lifted hands
and eyes.
"Never to the altar of Hymen with Sam Wynne."
"To what will she come? Why are not the laws more stringent, that I
might compel her to hear reason?"
"Console yourself, uncle. Were Britain a serfdom and you the Czar, you
could not _compel_ me to this step. _I_ will write to Mr. Wynne. Give
yourself no further trouble on the subject."
* * * * *
Fortune is proverbially called changeful, yet her caprice often takes
the form of repeating again and again a similar stroke of luck in the
same quarter. It appeared that Miss Keeldar--or her fortune--had by this
time made a sensation in the district, and produced an impression in
quarters by her unthought of. No less than three offers followed Mr.
Wynne's, all more or less eligible. All were in succession pressed on
her by her uncle, and all in succession she refused. Yet amongst them
was more than one gentleman of unexceptionable character as well as
ample wealth. Many besides her uncle asked what she meant, and whom she
expected to entrap, that she was so insolently fastidious.
At last the gossips thought they had found the key to her conduct, and
her uncle was sure of it; and what is more, the discovery showed his
niece to him in quite a new light, and he changed his whole deportment
to her accordingly.
Fieldhead had of late been fast growing too hot to hold them both. The
suave aunt could not reconcile them; the daughters froze at the view of
their quarrels. Gertrude and Isabella whispered by the hour together in
their dressing-room, and became chilled with decorous dread if they
chanced to be left alone with their audacious cousin. But, as I have
said, a change supervened. Mr. Sympson was appeased and his family
tranquillized.
The village of Nunnely has been alluded to--its old church, its forest,
its monastic ruins. It had also its hall, called the priory--an older, a
larger, a more lordly abode than any Briarfield or Whinbury owned; and
what is more, it had its man of title--its baronet, which neither
Briarfield nor Whinbury could boast. This possession--its proudest and
most prized--had for years been nominal only. The present baronet, a
young man hitherto resident in a distant province, was unknown on his
Yorkshire estate.
During Miss Keeldar's stay at the fashionable watering-place of
Cliffbridge, she and her friends had met with and been introduced to Sir
Philip Nunnely. They encountered him again and again on the sands, the
cliffs, in the various walks, sometimes at the public balls of the
place. He seemed solitary. His manner was very unpretending--too simple
to be termed affable; rather timid than proud. He did not _condescend_
to their society; he seemed _glad_ of it.
With any unaffected individual Shirley could easily and quickly cement
an acquaintance. She walked and talked with Sir Philip; she, her aunt,
and cousins sometimes took a sail in his yacht. She liked him because
she found him kind and modest, and was charmed to feel she had the power
to amuse him.
One slight drawback there was--where is the friendship without it?--Sir
Philip had a literary turn. He wrote poetry--sonnets, stanzas, ballads.
Perhaps Miss Keeldar thought him a little too fond of reading and
reciting these compositions; perhaps she wished the rhyme had possessed
more accuracy, the measure more music, the tropes more freshness, the
inspiration more fire. At any rate, she always winced when he recurred
to the subject of his poems, and usually did her best to divert the
conversation into another channel.
He would beguile her to take moonlight walks with him on the bridge, for
the sole purpose, as it seemed, of pouring into her ear the longest of
his ballads. He would lead her away to sequestered rustic seats, whence
the rush of the surf to the sands was heard soft and soothing; and when
he had her all to himself, and the sea lay before them, and the scented
shade of gardens spread round, and the tall shelter of cliffs rose
behind them, he would pull out his last batch of sonnets, and read them
in a voice tremulous with emotion. He did not seem to know that though
they might be rhyme they were not poetry. It appeared, by Shirley's
downcast eye and disturbed face, that she knew it, and felt heartily
mortified by the single foible of this good and amiable gentleman.
Often she tried, as gently as might be, to wean him from this fanatic
worship of the Muses. It was his monomania; on all ordinary subjects he
was sensible enough, and fain was she to engage him in ordinary topics.
He questioned her sometimes about his place at Nunnely; she was but too
happy to answer his interrogatories at length. She never wearied of
describing the antique priory, the wild silvan park, the hoary church
and hamlet; nor did she fail to counsel him to come down and gather his
tenantry about him in his ancestral halls.
Somewhat to her surprise, Sir Philip followed her advice to the letter,
and actually, towards the close of September, arrived at the priory.
He soon made a call at Fieldhead, and his first visit was not his last.
He said--when he had achieved the round of the neighbourhood--that under
no roof had he found such pleasant shelter as beneath the massive oak
beams of the gray manor-house of Briarfield; a cramped, modest dwelling
enough compared with his own, but he liked it.
Presently it did not suffice to sit with Shirley in her panelled
parlour, where others came and went, and where he could rarely find a
quiet moment to show her the latest production of his fertile muse; he
must have her out amongst the pleasant pastures, and lead her by the
still waters. _Tête-à-tête_ ramblings she shunned, so he made parties
for her to his own grounds, his glorious forest; to remoter
scenes--woods severed by the Wharfe, vales watered by the Aire.
Such assiduity covered Miss Keeldar with distinction. Her uncle's
prophetic soul anticipated a splendid future. He already scented the
time afar off when, with nonchalant air, and left foot nursed on his
right knee, he should be able to make dashingly-familiar allusion to his
"nephew the baronet." Now his niece dawned upon him no longer "a mad
girl," but a "most sensible woman." He termed her, in confidential
dialogues with Mrs. Sympson, "a truly superior person; peculiar, but
very clever." He treated her with exceeding deference; rose reverently
to open and shut doors for her; reddened his face and gave himself
headaches with stooping to pick up gloves, handkerchiefs, and other
loose property, whereof Shirley usually held but insecure tenure. He
would cut mysterious jokes about the superiority of woman's wit over
man's wisdom; commence obscure apologies for the blundering mistake he
had committed respecting the generalship, the tactics, of "a personage
not a hundred miles from Fieldhead." In short, he seemed elate as any
"midden-cock on pattens."
His niece viewed his manœuvres and received his innuendoes with phlegm;
apparently she did not above half comprehend to what aim they tended.
When plainly charged with being the preferred of the baronet, she said
she believed he did like her, and for her part she liked him. She had
never thought a man of rank--the only son of a proud, fond mother, the
only brother of doting sisters--could have so much goodness, and, on the
whole, so much sense.
Time proved, indeed, that Sir Philip liked her. Perhaps he had found in
her that "curious charm" noticed by Mr. Hall. He sought her presence
more and more, and at last with a frequency that attested it had become
to him an indispensable stimulus. About this time strange feelings
hovered round Fieldhead; restless hopes and haggard anxieties haunted
some of its rooms. There was an unquiet wandering of some of the inmates
among the still fields round the mansion; there was a sense of
expectancy that kept the nerves strained.
One thing seemed clear: Sir Philip was not a man to be despised. He was
amiable; if not highly intellectual, he was intelligent. Miss Keeldar
could not affirm of him, what she had so bitterly affirmed of Sam Wynne,
that his feelings were blunt, his tastes coarse, and his manners vulgar.
There was sensibility in his nature; there was a very real, if not a
very discriminating, love of the arts; there was the English gentleman
in all his deportment. As to his lineage and wealth, both were, of
course, far beyond her claims.
His appearance had at first elicited some laughing though not
ill-natured remarks from the merry Shirley. It was boyish. His features
were plain and slight, his hair sandy, his stature insignificant. But
she soon checked her sarcasm on this point; she would even fire up if
any one else made uncomplimentary allusion thereto. He had "a pleasing
countenance," she affirmed; "and there was that in his heart which was
better than three Roman noses, than the locks of Absalom or the
proportions of Saul." A spare and rare shaft she still reserved for his
unfortunate poetic propensity; but even here she would tolerate no irony
save her own.
In short, matters had reached a point which seemed fully to warrant an
observation made about this time by Mr. Yorke to the tutor, Louis.
"Yond' brother Robert of yours seems to me to be either a fool or a
madman. Two months ago I could have sworn he had the game all in his own
hands; and there he runs the country, and quarters himself up in London
for weeks together, and by the time he comes back he'll find himself
checkmated. Louis, 'there is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken
at the flood, leads on to fortune, but, once let slip, never returns
again.' I'd write to Robert, if I were you, and remind him of that."
"Robert had views on Miss Keeldar?" inquired Louis, as if the idea was
new to him.
"Views I suggested to him myself, and views he might have realized, for
she liked him."
"As a neighbour?"
"As more than that. I have seen her change countenance and colour at the
mere mention of his name. Write to the lad, I say, and tell him to come
home. He is a finer gentleman than this bit of a baronet, after all."
"Does it not strike you, Mr. Yorke, that for a mere penniless adventurer
to aspire to a rich woman's hand is presumptuous--contemptible?"
"Oh, if you are for high notions and double-refined sentiment, I've
naught to say. I'm a plain, practical man myself, and if Robert is
willing to give up that royal prize to a lad-rival--a puling slip of
aristocracy--I am quite agreeable. At _his_ age, in _his_ place, with
_his_ inducements, I would have acted differently. Neither baronet, nor
duke, nor prince should have snatched my sweetheart from me without a
struggle. But you tutors are such solemn chaps; it is almost like
speaking to a parson to consult with you."
* * * * *
Flattered and fawned upon as Shirley was just now, it appeared she was
not absolutely spoiled--that her better nature did not quite leave her.
Universal report had indeed ceased to couple her name with that of
Moore, and this silence seemed sanctioned by her own apparent oblivion
of the absentee; but that she had not _quite_ forgotten him--that she
still regarded him, if not with love, yet with interest--seemed proved
by the increased attention which at this juncture of affairs a sudden
attack of illness induced her to show that tutor-brother of Robert's, to
whom she habitually bore herself with strange alternations of cool
reserve and docile respect--now sweeping past him in all the dignity of
the moneyed heiress and prospective Lady Nunnely, and anon accosting him
as abashed school-girls are wont to accost their stern professors;
bridling her neck of ivory and curling her lip of carmine, if he
encountered her glance, one minute, and the next submitting to the grave
rebuke of his eye with as much contrition as if he had the power to
inflict penalties in case of contumacy.
Louis Moore had perhaps caught the fever, which for a few days laid him
low, in one of the poor cottages of the district, which he, his lame
pupil, and Mr. Hall were in the habit of visiting together. At any rate
he sickened, and after opposing to the malady a taciturn resistance for
a day or two, was obliged to keep his chamber.
He lay tossing on his thorny bed one evening, Henry, who would not quit
him, watching faithfully beside him, when a tap--too light to be that of
Mrs. Gill or the housemaid--summoned young Sympson to the door.
"How is Mr. Moore to-night?" asked a low voice from the dark gallery.
"Come in and see him yourself."
"Is he asleep?"
"I wish he could sleep. Come and speak to him, Shirley."
"He would not like it."
But the speaker stepped in, and Henry, seeing her hesitate on the
threshold, took her hand and drew her to the couch.
The shaded light showed Miss Keeldar's form but imperfectly; yet it
revealed her in elegant attire. There was a party assembled below,
including Sir Philip Nunnely; the ladies were now in the drawing-room,
and their hostess had stolen from them to visit Henry's tutor. Her pure
white dress, her fair arms and neck, the trembling chainlet of gold
circling her throat and quivering on her breast, glistened strangely
amid the obscurity of the sickroom. Her mien was chastened and pensive.
She spoke gently.
"Mr. Moore, how are you to-night?"
"I have not been very ill, and am now better."
"I heard that you complained of thirst. I have brought you some grapes;
can you taste one?"
"No; but I thank you for remembering me."
"Just one."
From the rich cluster that filled a small basket held in her hand she
severed a berry and offered it to his lips. He shook his head, and
turned aside his flushed face.
"But what, then, can I bring you instead? You have no wish for fruit;
yet I see that your lips are parched. What beverage do you prefer?"
"Mrs. Gill supplies me with toast-and-water. I like it best."
Silence fell for some minutes.
"Do you suffer?--have you pain?"
"Very little."
"What made you ill?"
Silence.
"I wonder what caused this fever? To what do you attribute it?"
"Miasma, perhaps--malaria. This is autumn, a season fertile in fevers."
"I hear you often visit the sick in Briarfield, and Nunnely too, with
Mr. Hall. You should be on your guard; temerity is not wise."
"That reminds me, Miss Keeldar, that perhaps you had better not enter
this chamber or come near this couch. I do not believe my illness is
infectious. I scarcely fear"--with a sort of smile--"_you_ will take it;
but why should you run even the shadow of a risk? Leave me."
"Patience, I will go soon; but I should like to do something for you
before I depart--any little service----"
"They will miss you below."
"No; the gentlemen are still at table."
"They will not linger long. Sir Philip Nunnely is no wine-bibber, and I
hear him just now pass from the dining-room to the drawing-room."
"It is a servant."
"It is Sir Philip; I know his step."
"Your hearing is acute."
"It is never dull, and the sense seems sharpened at present. Sir Philip
was here to tea last night. I heard you sing to him some song which he
had brought you. I heard him, when he took his departure at eleven
o'clock, call you out on to the pavement, to look at the evening star."
"You must be nervously sensitive."
"I heard him kiss your hand."
"Impossible!"
"No: my chamber is over the hall, the window just above the front door;
the sash was a little raised, for I felt feverish. You stood ten minutes
with him on the steps. I heard your discourse, every word, and I heard
the salute.--Henry, give me some water."
"Let me give it him."
But he half rose to take the glass from young Sympson, and declined her
attendance.
"And can I do nothing?"
"Nothing; for you cannot guarantee me a night's peaceful rest, and it is
all I at present want."
"You do not sleep well?"
"Sleep has left me."
"Yet you said you were not very ill?"
"I am often sleepless when in high health."
"If I had power, I would lap you in the most placid slumber--quite deep
and hushed, without a dream."
"Blank annihilation! I do not ask that."
"With dreams of all you most desire."
"Monstrous delusions! The sleep would be delirium, the waking death."
"Your wishes are not so chimerical; you are no visionary."
"Miss Keeldar, I suppose you think so; but my character is not, perhaps,
quite as legible to you as a page of the last new novel might be."
"That is possible. But this sleep--I _should_ like to woo it to your
pillow, to win for you its favour. If I took a book and sat down and
read some pages? I can well spare half an hour."
"Thank you, but I will not detain you."
"I would read softly."
"It would not do. I am too feverish and excitable to bear a soft,
cooing, vibrating voice close at my ear. You had better leave me."
"Well, I will go."
"And no good-night?"
"Yes, sir, yes. Mr. Moore, good-night." (Exit Shirley.)
"Henry, my boy, go to bed now; it is time you had some repose."
"Sir, it would please me to watch at your bedside all night."
"Nothing less called for. I am getting better. There, go."
"Give me your blessing, sir."
"God bless you, my best pupil!"
"You never call me your dearest pupil!"
"No, nor ever shall."
* * * * *
Possibly Miss Keeldar resented her former teacher's rejection of her
courtesy. It is certain she did not repeat the offer of it. Often as her
light step traversed the gallery in the course of a day, it did not
again pause at his door; nor did her "cooing, vibrating voice" disturb a
second time the hush of the sickroom. A sickroom, indeed, it soon ceased
to be; Mr. Moore's good constitution quickly triumphed over his
indisposition. In a few days he shook it off, and resumed his duties as
tutor.
That "auld lang syne" had still its authority both with preceptor and
scholar was proved by the manner in which he sometimes promptly passed
the distance she usually maintained between them, and put down her high
reserve with a firm, quiet hand.
One afternoon the Sympson family were gone out to take a carriage
airing. Shirley, never sorry to snatch a reprieve from their society,
had remained behind, detained by business, as she said. The business--a
little letter-writing--was soon dispatched after the yard gates had
closed on the carriage; Miss Keeldar betook herself to the garden.
It was a peaceful autumn day. The gilding of the Indian summer mellowed
the pastures far and wide. The russet woods stood ripe to be stripped,
but were yet full of leaf. The purple of heath-bloom, faded but not
withered, tinged the hills. The beck wandered down to the Hollow,
through a silent district; no wind followed its course or haunted its
woody borders. Fieldhead gardens bore the seal of gentle decay. On the
walks, swept that morning, yellow leaves had fluttered down again. Its
time of flowers, and even of fruits, was over; but a scantling of
apples enriched the trees. Only a blossom here and there expanded pale
and delicate amidst a knot of faded leaves.
These single flowers--the last of their race--Shirley culled as she
wandered thoughtfully amongst the beds. She was fastening into her
girdle a hueless and scentless nosegay, when Henry Sympson called to her
as he came limping from the house.
"Shirley, Mr. Moore would be glad to see you in the schoolroom and to
hear you read a little French, if you have no more urgent occupation."
The messenger delivered his commission very simply, as if it were a mere
matter of course.
"Did Mr. Moore tell you to say that?"
"Certainly; why not? And now, do come, and let us once more be as we
were at Sympson Grove. We used to have pleasant school-hours in those
days."
Miss Keeldar perhaps thought that circumstances were changed since then;
however, she made no remark, but after a little reflection quietly
followed Henry.
Entering the schoolroom, she inclined her head with a decent obeisance,
as had been her wont in former times. She removed her bonnet, and hung
it up beside Henry's cap. Louis Moore sat at his desk, turning the
leaves of a book, open before him, and marking passages with his pencil.
He just moved, in acknowledgment of her curtsy, but did not rise.
"You proposed to read to me a few nights ago," said he. "I could not
hear you then. My attention is now at your service. A little renewed
practice in French may not be unprofitable. Your accent, I have
observed, begins to rust."
"What book shall I take?"
"Here are the posthumous works of St. Pierre. Read a few pages of the
'Fragments de l'Amazone.'"
She accepted the chair which he had placed in readiness near his own;
the volume lay on his desk--there was but one between them; her sweeping
curls dropped so low as to hide the page from him.
"Put back your hair," he said.
For one moment Shirley looked not quite certain whether she would obey
the request or disregard it. A flicker of her eye beamed furtive on the
professor's face. Perhaps if he had been looking at her harshly or
timidly, or if one undecided line had marked his countenance, she would
have rebelled, and the lesson had ended there and then; but he was only
awaiting her compliance--as calm as marble, and as cool. She threw the
veil of tresses behind her ear. It was well her face owned an agreeable
outline, and that her cheek possessed the polish and the roundness of
early youth, or, thus robbed of a softening shade, the contours might
have lost their grace. But what mattered that in the present society?
Neither Calypso nor Eucharis cared to fascinate Mentor.
She began to read. The language had become strange to her tongue; it
faltered; the lecture flowed unevenly, impeded by hurried breath, broken
by Anglicized tones. She stopped.
"I can't do it. Read me a paragraph, if you please, Mr. Moore."
What _he_ read _she_ repeated. She caught his accent in three minutes.
"Très bien," was the approving comment at the close of the piece.
"C'est presque le Français rattrapé, n'est-ce pas?"
"You could not write French as you once could, I dare say?"
"Oh no! I should make strange work of my concords now."
"You could not compose the _devoir_ of 'La Première Femme Savante'?"
"Do you still remember that rubbish?"
"Every line."
"I doubt you."
"I will engage to repeat it word for word."
"You would stop short at the first line."
"Challenge me to the experiment."
"I challenge you."
He proceeded to recite the following. He gave it in French, but we must
translate, on pain of being unintelligible to some readers.
* * * * *
"And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of
the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons
of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they
took them wives of all which they chose."
This was in the dawn of time, before the morning stars were set, and
while they yet sang together.
The epoch is so remote, the mists and dewy gray of matin twilight veil
it with so vague an obscurity, that all distinct feature of custom, all
clear line of locality, evade perception and baffle research. It must
suffice to know that the world then existed; that men peopled it; that
man's nature, with its passions, sympathies, pains, and pleasures,
informed the planet and gave it soul.
A certain tribe colonized a certain spot on the globe; of what race this
tribe--unknown; in what region that spot--untold. We usually think of
the East when we refer to transactions of that date; but who shall
declare that there was no life in the West, the South, the North? What
is to disprove that this tribe, instead of camping under palm groves in
Asia, wandered beneath island oak woods rooted in our own seas of
Europe?
It is no sandy plain, nor any circumscribed and scant oasis I seem to
realize. A forest valley, with rocky sides and brown profundity of
shade, formed by tree crowding on tree, descends deep before me. Here,
indeed, dwell human beings, but so few, and in alleys so thick branched
and overarched, they are neither heard nor seen. Are they savage?
Doubtless. They live by the crook and the bow; half shepherds, half
hunters, their flocks wander wild as their prey. Are they happy? No, not
more happy than we are at this day. Are they good? No, not better than
ourselves. Their nature is our nature--human both. There is one in this
tribe too often miserable--a child bereaved of both parents. None cares
for this child. She is fed sometimes, but oftener forgotten. A hut
rarely receives her; the hollow tree and chill cavern are her home.
Forsaken, lost, and wandering, she lives more with the wild beast and
bird than with her own kind. Hunger and cold are her comrades; sadness
hovers over, and solitude besets her round. Unheeded and unvalued, she
should die; but she both lives and grows. The green wilderness nurses
her, and becomes to her a mother; feeds her on juicy berry, on
saccharine root and nut.
There is something in the air of this clime which fosters life kindly.
There must be something, too, in its dews which heals with sovereign
balm. Its gentle seasons exaggerate no passion, no sense; its
temperature tends to harmony; its breezes, you would say, bring down
from heaven the germ of pure thought and purer feeling. Not grotesquely
fantastic are the forms of cliff and foliage, not violently vivid the
colouring of flower and bird. In all the grandeur of these forests
there is repose; in all their freshness there is tenderness.
The gentle charm vouchsafed to flower and tree, bestowed on deer and
dove, has not been denied to the human nursling. All solitary, she has
sprung up straight and graceful. Nature cast her features in a fine
mould; they have matured in their pure, accurate first lines, unaltered
by the shocks of disease. No fierce dry blast has dealt rudely with the
surface of her frame; no burning sun has crisped or withered her
tresses. Her form gleams ivory-white through the trees; her hair flows
plenteous, long, and glossy; her eyes, not dazzled by vertical fires,
beam in the shade large and open, and full and dewy. Above those eyes,
when the breeze bares her forehead, shines an expanse fair and ample--a
clear, candid page, whereon knowledge, should knowledge ever come, might
write a golden record. You see in the desolate young savage nothing
vicious or vacant. She haunts the wood harmless and thoughtful, though
of what one so untaught can think it is not easy to divine.
On the evening of one summer day, before the Flood, being utterly
alone--for she had lost all trace of her tribe, who had wandered leagues
away, she knew not where--she went up from the vale, to watch Day take
leave and Night arrive. A crag overspread by a tree was her station. The
oak roots, turfed and mossed, gave a seat; the oak boughs, thick-leaved,
wove a canopy.
Slow and grand the Day withdrew, passing in purple fire, and parting to
the farewell of a wild, low chorus from the woodlands. Then Night
entered, quiet as death. The wind fell, the birds ceased singing. Now
every nest held happy mates, and hart and hind slumbered blissfully safe
in their lair.
The girl sat, her body still, her soul astir; occupied, however, rather
in feeling than in thinking, in wishing than hoping, in imagining than
projecting. She felt the world, the sky, the night, boundlessly mighty.
Of all things herself seemed to herself the centre--a small, forgotten
atom of life, a spark of soul, emitted inadvertent from the great
creative source, and now burning unmarked to waste in the heart of a
black hollow. She asked, was she thus to burn out and perish, her living
light doing no good, never seen, never needed--a star in an else
starless firmament, which nor shepherd, nor wanderer, nor sage, nor
priest tracked as a guide or read as a prophecy? Could this be, she
demanded, when the flame of her intelligence burned so vivid; when her
life beat so true, and real, and potent; when something within her
stirred disquieted, and restlessly asserted a God-given strength, for
which it insisted she should find exercise?
She gazed abroad on Heaven and Evening. Heaven and Evening gazed back on
her. She bent down, searching bank, hill, river, spread dim below. All
she questioned responded by oracles. She heard--she was impressed; but
she could not understand. Above her head she raised her hands joined
together.
"Guidance--help--comfort--come!" was her cry.
There was no voice, nor any that answered.
She waited, kneeling, steadfastly looking up. Yonder sky was sealed; the
solemn stars shone alien and remote.
At last one overstretched chord of her agony slacked; she thought
Something above relented; she felt as if Something far round drew
nigher; she heard as if Silence spoke. There was no language, no word,
only a tone.
Again--a fine, full, lofty tone, a deep, soft sound, like a storm
whispering, made twilight undulate.
Once more, profounder, nearer, clearer, it rolled harmonious.
Yet again--a distinct voice passed between Heaven and Earth.
"Eva!"
If Eva were not this woman's name, she had none. She rose. "Here am I."
"Eva!"
"O Night (it can be but Night that speaks), I am here!"
The voice, descending, reached Earth.
"Eva!"
"Lord," she cried, "behold thine handmaid!"
She had her religion--all tribes held some creed.
"I come--a Comforter!"
"Lord, come quickly!"
The Evening flushed full of hope; the Air panted; the Moon--rising
before--ascended large, but her light showed no shape.
"Lean towards me, Eva. Enter my arms; repose thus."
"Thus I lean, O Invisible but felt! And what art thou?"
"Eva, I have brought a living draught from heaven. Daughter of Man,
drink of my cup!"
"I drink: it is as if sweetest dew visited my lips in a full current. My
arid heart revives; my affliction is lightened; my strait and struggle
are gone. And the night changes! the wood, the hill, the moon, the wide
sky--all change!"
"All change, and for ever. I take from thy vision darkness; I loosen
from thy faculties fetters! I level in thy path obstacles; I with my
presence fill vacancy. I claim as mine the lost atom of life. I take to
myself the spark of soul--burning heretofore forgotten!"
"O take me! O claim me! This is a god."
"This is a son of God--one who feels himself in the portion of life that
stirs you. He is suffered to reclaim his own, and so to foster and aid
that it shall not perish hopeless."
"A son of God! Am I indeed chosen?"
"Thou only in this land. I saw thee that thou wert fair; I knew thee
that thou wert mine. To me it is given to rescue, to sustain, to cherish
mine own. Acknowledge in me that Seraph on earth named Genius."
"My glorious Bridegroom! true Dayspring from on high! All I would have
at last I possess. I receive a revelation. The dark hint, the obscure
whisper, which have haunted me from childhood, are interpreted. Thou art
He I sought. Godborn, take me, thy bride!"
"Unhumbled, I can take what is mine. Did I not give from the altar the
very flame which lit Eva's being? Come again into the heaven whence thou
wert sent."
That Presence, invisible but mighty, gathered her in like a lamb to the
fold; that voice, soft but all-pervading, vibrated through her heart
like music. Her eye received no image; and yet a sense visited her
vision and her brain as of the serenity of stainless air, the power of
sovereign seas, the majesty of marching stars, the energy of colliding
elements, the rooted endurance of hills wide based, and, above all, as
of the lustre of heroic beauty rushing victorious on the Night,
vanquishing its shadows like a diviner sun.
Such was the bridal hour of Genius and Humanity. Who shall rehearse the
tale of their after-union? Who shall depict its bliss and bale? Who
shall tell how He between whom and the Woman God put enmity forged
deadly plots to break the bond or defile its purity? Who shall record
the long strife between Serpent and Seraph:--How still the Father of
Lies insinuated evil into good, pride into wisdom, grossness into glory,
pain into bliss, poison into passion? How the "dreadless Angel" defied,
resisted, and repelled? How again and again he refined the polluted cup,
exalted the debased emotion, rectified the perverted impulse, detected
the lurking venom, baffled the frontless temptation--purified,
justified, watched, and withstood? How, by his patience, by his
strength, by that unutterable excellence he held from God--his
Origin--this faithful Seraph fought for Humanity a good fight through
time; and, when Time's course closed, and Death was encountered at the
end, barring with fleshless arm the portals of Eternity, how Genius
still held close his dying bride, sustained her through the agony of the
passage, bore her triumphant into his own home, Heaven; restored her,
redeemed, to Jehovah, her Maker; and at last, before Angel and
Archangel, crowned her with the crown of Immortality?
Who shall of these things write the chronicle?
* * * * *
"I never could correct that composition," observed Shirley, as Moore
concluded. "Your censor-pencil scored it with condemnatory lines, whose
signification I strove vainly to fathom."
She had taken a crayon from the tutor's desk, and was drawing little
leaves, fragments of pillars, broken crosses, on the margin of the book.
"French may be half forgotten, but the habits of the French lesson are
retained, I see," said Louis. "My books would now, as erst, be unsafe
with you. My newly-bound St. Pierre would soon be like my Racine--Miss
Keeldar, her mark, traced on every page."
Shirley dropped her crayon as if it burned her fingers.
"Tell me what were the faults of that _devoir_?" she asked. "Were they
grammatical errors, or did you object to the substance?"
"I never said that the lines I drew were indications of faults at all.
You would have it that such was the case, and I refrained from
contradiction."
"What else did they denote?"
"No matter now."
"Mr. Moore," cried Henry, "make Shirley repeat some of the pieces she
used to say so well by heart."
"If I ask for any, it will be 'Le Cheval Dompté,'" said Moore, trimming
with his penknife the pencil Miss Keeldar had worn to a stump.
She turned aside her head; the neck, the clear cheek, forsaken by their
natural veil, were seen to flush warm.
"Ah! she has not forgotten, you see, sir," said Henry, exultant. "She
knows how naughty she was."
A smile, which Shirley would not permit to expand, made her lip tremble;
she bent her face, and hid it half with her arms, half in her curls,
which, as she stooped, fell loose again. "Certainly I was a rebel," she
answered.
"A rebel!" repeated Henry. "Yes; you and papa had quarrelled terribly,
and you set both him and mamma, and Mrs. Pryor, and everybody, at
defiance. You said he had insulted you----"
"He _had_ insulted me," interposed Shirley.
"And you wanted to leave Sympson Grove directly. You packed your things
up, and papa threw them out of your trunk; mamma cried, Mrs. Pryor
cried; they both stood wringing their hands begging you to be patient;
and you knelt on the floor with your things and your up-turned box
before you, looking, Shirley, looking--why, in one of _your_ passions.
Your features, in such passions, are not distorted; they are fixed, but
quite beautiful. You scarcely look angry, only resolute, and in a
certain haste; yet one feels that at such times an obstacle cast across
your path would be split as with lightning. Papa lost heart, and called
Mr. Moore."
"Enough, Henry."
"No, it is not enough. I hardly know how Mr. Moore managed, except that
I recollect he suggested to papa that agitation would bring on his gout;
and then he spoke quietly to the ladies, and got them away; and
afterwards he said to you, Miss Shirley, that it was of no use talking
or lecturing now, but that the tea-things were just brought into the
schoolroom, and he was very thirsty, and he would be glad if you would
leave your packing for the present and come and make a cup of tea for
him and me. You came; you would not talk at first, but soon you softened
and grew cheerful. Mr. Moore began to tell us about the Continent, the
war, and Bonaparte--subjects we were both fond of listening to. After
tea he said we should neither of us leave him that evening; he would not
let us stray out of his sight, lest we should again get into mischief.
We sat one on each side of him. We were so happy. I never passed so
pleasant an evening. The next day he gave you, missy, a lecture of an
hour, and wound it up by marking you a piece to learn in Bossuet as a
punishment-lesson--'Le Cheval Dompté.' You learned it instead of packing
up, Shirley. We heard no more of your running away. Mr. Moore used to
tease you on the subject for a year afterwards."
"She never said a lesson with greater spirit," subjoined Moore. "She
then, for the first time, gave me the treat of hearing my native tongue
spoken without accent by an English girl."
"She was as sweet as summer cherries for a month afterwards," struck in
Henry: "a good hearty quarrel always left Shirley's temper better than
it found it."
"You talk of me as if I were not present," observed Miss Keeldar, who
had not yet lifted her face.
"Are you sure you _are_ present?" asked Moore. "There have been moments
since my arrival here when I have been tempted to inquire of the lady of
Fieldhead if she knew what had become of my former pupil."
"She is here now."
"I see her, and humble enough; but I would neither advise Harry nor
others to believe too implicitly in the humility which one moment can
hide its blushing face like a modest little child, and the next lift it
pale and lofty as a marble Juno."
"One man in times of old, it is said, imparted vitality to the statue he
had chiselled; others may have the contrary gift of turning life to
stone."
Moore paused on this observation before he replied to it. His look, at
once struck and meditative, said, "A strange phrase; what may it mean?"
He turned it over in his mind, with thought deep and slow, as some
German pondering metaphysics.
"You mean," he said at last, "that some men inspire repugnance, and so
chill the kind heart."
"Ingenious!" responded Shirley. "If the interpretation pleases you, you
are welcome to hold it valid. _I_ don't care."
And with that she raised her head, lofty in look and statue-like in hue,
as Louis had described it.
"Behold the metamorphosis!" he said; "scarce imagined ere it is
realized: a lowly nymph develops to an inaccessible goddess. But Henry
must not be disappointed of his recitation, and Olympia will deign to
oblige him. Let us begin."
"I have forgotten the very first line."
"Which I have not. _My_ memory, if a slow, is a retentive one. I acquire
deliberately both knowledge and liking. The acquisition grows into my
brain, and the sentiment into my breast; and it is not as the
rapid-springing produce which, having no root in itself, flourishes
verdurous enough for a time, but too soon falls withered away.
Attention, Henry! Miss Keeldar consents to favour you. 'Voyez ce cheval
ardent et impétueux,' so it commences."
Miss Keeldar did consent to make the effort; but she soon stopped.
"Unless I heard the whole repeated I cannot continue it," she said.
"Yet it was quickly learned--'soon gained, soon gone,'" moralized the
tutor. He recited the passage deliberately, accurately, with slow,
impressive emphasis.
Shirley, by degrees, inclined her ear as he went on. Her face, before
turned from him, _re_turned towards him. When he ceased, she took the
word up as if from his lips; she took his very tone; she seized his very
accent; she delivered the periods as he had delivered them; she
reproduced his manner, his pronunciation, his expression.
It was now her turn to petition.
"Recall 'Le Songe d'Athalie,'" she entreated, "and say it."
He said it for her. She took it from him; she found lively excitement in
the pleasure of making his language her own. She asked for further
indulgence; all the old school pieces were revived, and with them
Shirley's old school days.
He had gone through some of the best passages of Racine and Corneille,
and then had heard the echo of his own deep tones in the girl's voice,
that modulated itself faithfully on his. "Le chêne et le Roseau," that
most beautiful of La Fontaine's fables, had been recited, well recited,
by the tutor, and the pupil had animatedly availed herself of the
lesson. Perhaps a simultaneous feeling seized them now, that their
enthusiasm had kindled to a glow, which the slight fuel of French poetry
no longer sufficed to feed; perhaps they longed for a trunk of English
oak to be thrown as a Yule log to the devouring flame. Moore observed,
"And these are our best pieces! And we have nothing more dramatic,
nervous, natural!"
And then he smiled and was silent. His whole nature seemed serenely
alight. He stood on the hearth, leaning his elbow on the mantelpiece,
musing not unblissfully.
Twilight was closing on the diminished autumn day. The schoolroom
windows--darkened with creeping plants, from which no high October winds
had as yet swept the sere foliage--admitted scarce a gleam of sky; but
the fire gave light enough to talk by.
And now Louis Moore addressed his pupil in French, and she answered at
first with laughing hesitation and in broken phrase. Moore encouraged
while he corrected her. Henry joined in the lesson; the two scholars
stood opposite the master, their arms round each other's waists. Tartar,
who long since had craved and obtained admission, sat sagely in the
centre of the rug, staring at the blaze which burst fitful from morsels
of coal among the red cinders. The group were happy enough, but--
"Pleasures are like poppies spread;
You seize the flower--its bloom is shed."
The dull, rumbling sound of wheels was heard on the pavement in the
yard.
"It is the carriage returned," said Shirley; "and dinner must be just
ready, and I am not dressed."
A servant came in with Mr. Moore's candle and tea; for the tutor and his
pupil usually dined at luncheon time.
"Mr. Sympson and the ladies are returned," she said, "and Sir Philip
Nunnely is with them."
"How you did start, and how your hand trembled, Shirley!" said Henry,
when the maid had closed the shutter and was gone. "But I know
why--don't you, Mr. Moore? I know what papa intends. He is a little ugly
man, that Sir Philip. I wish he had not come. I wish sisters and all of
them had stayed at De Walden Hall to dine.--Shirley should once more
have made tea for you and me, Mr. Moore, and we would have had a happy
evening of it."
Moore was locking up his desk and putting away his St. Pierre. "That was
_your_ plan, was it, my boy?"
"Don't you approve it, sir?"
"I approve nothing utopian. Look Life in its iron face; stare Reality
out of its brassy countenance. Make the tea, Henry; I shall be back in a
minute."
He left the room; so did Shirley, by another door.